Ingurumena

Six years ago, the Toki Alai Secondary School in Irún began to develop different actions for sustainability within the School Agenda 21 programme. With a teacher in charge, a committee consisting of four teaching staff members and one representative from each class, has taken control of this initiative, through which they have covered, included in the school curriculum, subjects such as energy, water, waste, mobility and biodiversity, among others.

Those responsible for the educational guidelines of Toki Alai are aware that sustainability begins at home and that it is difficult for students to become responsible for these or other issues if they are not educated precisely in this sense of responsibility. They also believe it is essential not only to incorporate in the school the surroundings in which it is located but also to take the school out to its surroundings, joining forces with other external agents to carry out joint educational work.

Therefore, they have launched a coexistence project containing all actions that are carried out at the school, starting with the educational process, in order to achieve an inclusive school, where people are at the heart of its operation. To provide the teaching staff with time for coordination in order to make the students the key figures of this process, to involve the whole school community in the different actions, to create informal time and places to foster relations between people or offer students the necessary resources (time, space, etc.) for individual and group reflection and different structures to generate greater autonomy (commissions, coexistence circles, etc.) are some of the proposals that have been reflected in the new way of organising school life.

On the other hand, regarding the school curriculum, it has followed the maxim that all educational initiatives take into account social and civic competence. A cooperative methodology or a new schedule of tutorials focused on the implementation of the coexistence plan join the commitment to include a new perspective on service to society. Through work projects and studies incorporating different educational disciplines they have proposed to provide the environment with a service that fosters a concern for sustainability. This concept is open to the entire community; not only educational (workers, students, families...) but also its environment (other schools in Irún, the town hall, the associative movement...).